The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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The Wolverine: How long before it goes beyond four teams? Brandon: "This will be out there for a while. People will have to get used to it and see how it works. Contracts have been cut with networks, and they go out a ways into the future. "But I have this horrible fear that when this gets really controversial and people start to gripe because they think somebody got screwed, because they weren't included in the four, the political drumbeat will begin, and people will try to expand, because the only thing better than four would be six, or eight, or 10. "There are a lot of people out there that want this to feel like March Mad- ness in basketball. But what they fail to understand is that these young kids can play three basketball games in one week. You can't play three football games in one week. Recovery at the level these kids are playing requires them to get rest and healing before they can get out and do it again. "Now you're talking about a longer season, or a completely different con- figuration in terms of how the regular season works, or how the bowl season works." The Wolverine: Speaking of griping, many don't like the Michigan State and Ohio State games being both on the road or both at home in the same season going forward. Your thoughts on that? Brandon: "I don't like it either. But I don't get to schedule the Big Ten Conference." The Wolverine: Some people think you should be able to. Brandon: [Laughs] "A lot of people think I'm in charge of traffic, too. I should do a better job of making it easier to get out of a game. I appreci- ate the fact that people think I have all this control. "Every athletic director in the con- ference wishes things were different. Sure, we can all go in a room and pound on the table, but the thing I pounded on the table for was to play Michigan State every year. I thought that was pretty important. At one point, that wasn't necessarily a given. "We were trying to figure out who was going to be in what division. I felt very strongly we had to play Ohio State the last game of the year, every year. You can only lay out so many demands, because there are 13 other athletic directors laying out their de- mands. TELEVISION 9,500,000 The number of viewers for the Michigan-Ohio State game making it the sixth-most-watched regular- season college football game televi- sion broadcast in the 2013 season. 8,650,000 Next on the list at No. 7 overall, was the Michigan-Notre Dame contest, which drew an audience of 8.65 million viewers. Alabama had three appearances in the top 10 most- watched regular-season games, fol- lowed by LSU, Texas A&M and Michi- gan with two.